Arapaho, State of
A vast western state known primarily for agriculture and ranching, to the extent that it is known. Pronounced aw-RAH-pah-ho.

Bavariana, Deltona
The eastern portion of the state, including a dozen or so countries. Known largely for its strong Germanic and Catholic roots. It’s sometimes viewed as a “state-within-a-state” due to the cultural differences between it and the southern accent of the rest of the state.

Callie, Arapaho
The state where we presently live. A rather small town that serves as a hub for the tri-county area.

Cascadia, State of
A state in the Pacific northwest. It’s known mostly by the Zaulem Sound area, which includes the state capitol of Avalon, the city where I live Soundview, and the largest city in the state, Zaulem. The state is well known for its technological innovation in the Zaulem Sound area and its suburb Enterprise City, which houses one of the largest technology companies in the world.

Charlton, Tennassee
Colosse’s rival city in the state to the north. Very large city with all (or most) of the sports team and international business trimmings.

Colosse, Deltona
The large southern city in whose suburbs I was raised. Colosse has a metropolitan area that is in the top 25 of the country and it’s generally a bigger place than most people realize. The home to the statehouse, multiple major league sports teams (including baseball’s Colosse Canes and hockey’s Deltona Dragons), and Southern Tech University. For more, search Colosse in The Official Guide to Delosa.

Delianapolis, Deltona
A moderate-to-large city on the opposite end from the state from Colosse. For more, search Delianapolis in The Official Guide to Delosa.

Deseret, State of
Large western state known primarily for its large Mormon population. 80% of the state’s population can be found within ten miles of I-13, which vertically cuts the state in half. Deseret’s capital is Gazalem.

Deltona, State of
The southern state in which I was raised, known primarily for it’s largest city and capital, Colosse. The state was originally settled by German Catholics and its roots are evident. The western portion of the state is dominated by Colosse. The central and northern parts of the state are rural south. The eastern part of the state is called Bavariana due to its Germanic character. (Note: This state has gone through a couple of namechanges. Was previously “Dixona” and “Delosa.”

Enterprise City, Cascadia
The home to Mindstorm, one of the largest technology companies in the world where I work. There isn’t much else there of interest. It is located nearby New City, which is a little more urban in nature. Both are not far from the metropolis of Zaulem.

Ephesus, Deltona
Deltona’s premier college town as the home of the University of Deltona. For more, search Ephesus in The Official Guide to Delosa.

Estacado, State of
A geographically large but not highly populated south in the inland southwest of the United States. We moved to the area in 2006 and will be here for a year or two. I live in the state’s largest city of Santomas and work in the city’s capital of Almeida.

Fort Beck, Deseret
Fort Beck is actually a section of the town of Zarahemla. Clancy and I lived right on the border of Fort Beck. Fort Beck housed the American soldiers sent to rein in the early Mormon settlers to the area. The fort was closed and converted into Beck State University.

Mayne, Deltona
The suburb of Colosse in which I was raised. Tangramayne is the site of one of the Air Force’s R&D laboratories so a significant portion of the population works either for the Department of Defense or a contractor.

Mocum, Deseret
The town in Deseret where I worked when we lived out there. It was about 30-40 miles away from Fort Beck and Zarahemla, where I was living out there. Mocum is a much more religious town than Zarahemla and the home to a surprising number of white collar jobs.

Ouachita, State of
The mostly rural southern state that my father is originally from.

Ponchartrain, Acadiana
A large party-city in Acadiana. Home to the University of Acadiana, the legendary Poncho Row, and gambling. Clancy and I first kissed in this city.

Redstone, Arapaho
The small city that is the closest “urban” area to Callie. It’s blue collar and run down. I substitute taught in their school system.

Santomas, Estacado
A city of about half-a-million in the heart of the state of Estacado in southwestern America. As the home of the University of Estacado and the main job center of the state, it’s full of young people both students and graduates. It is known throughout the state as the hotbed of urban liberalism.

Soundview, Cascadia
The city in Cascadia where I live. It’s a blue collared suburb/sister to the main city of Zaulem. It houses the University of Cascadia as well as a minor league sports team.

Summit, Arapaho
Arapaho’s capital city, home of the University of Arapaho, and the state’s largest city. It is one of the places we go to meet our more urban needs.

Southern Tech University, Deltona
The university I attended. It’s called SoTech (or Sotech) for short. It began as a purely technical college, though expanded to become a comprehensive university. It’s colors are black and gold and its mascot is the Wolf Pack or the Packers.

Tennassee, State of
A rival southern state to Deltona. It is not misspelled.

Zarahemla, Deseret
A small city of less than 100k people. Despite a significant Mormon population, Zarahemla has the reputation among the more pious Deseretians as a den of iniquity. It’s one of the few liberal-leaning places in the state outside the capital city, due mostly to the college located within the city, Beck State University.

Zaulem, Cascadia
Zaulem is the largest city in the state of Cascadia. I go there occasionally when something important is in town. They have at least a couple of professional sports team. The city is mostly known for being one of the more liberal cities in the country.

Prevailing theory assumes that people enforce norms in order to pressure others to act in ways that they approve. Yet there are numerous examples of “unpopular norms” in which people compel each other to do things that they privately disapprove. While peer sanctioning suggests a ready explanation for why people conform to unpopular norms, it is harder to understand why they would enforce a norm they privately oppose. The authors argue that people enforce unpopular norms to show that they have complied out of genuine conviction and not because of social pressure. They use laboratory experiments to demonstrate this “false enforcement” in the context of a wine tasting and an academic text evaluation. Both studies find that participants who conformed to a norm due to social pressure then falsely enforced the norm by publicly criticizing a lone deviant. A third study shows that enforcement of a norm effectively signals the enforcer’s genuine support for the norm. These results
demonstrate the potential for a vicious cycle in which perceived pressures to conform to and falsely enforce an unpopular norm re-inforce one another.

Several recent studies have investigated the consequences of racial intermarriage for marital stability. None of these studies properly control for first-order racial differences in divorce risk, therefore failing to appropriately identify the effect of intermarriage. Our article builds on an earlier generation of studies to develop a model that appropriately identifies the consequences of crossing racial boundaries in matrimony. We analyze the 1995 and 2002 National Survey of Family Growth using a parametr

If there is one thing in that statement which I would take issue with, it is Mallon’s overly optimistic belief that the new policy is “well-meaning”.

That’s because anyone who has spent any time in an Irish hospital over the last few years will have seen the smoking ban enforced in draconian and nasty ways which are simply punitive and judgmental.

Even those who have been fortunate enough to stay away from hospitals in that time can see the results of such bans.

Drive by the Mater on any rainy day, for instance, and you will see patients huddled together in their dressing gowns, exposed to the elements as they take a break from the drudgery of hospital life. This, apparently, is healthier than allowing the patients an enclosed area – which they used to have – where they could smoke without bothering anyone else and, perhaps, not get soaked to the bone at the same time.

People smoke in hospitals for a variety of reasons, and one which is never considered by the authorities is that it is actually good for their head.

Certainly, when my father spent a few years in and out of James’s hospital with the terminal, non-smoking related disease which would ultimately kill him, he measured the days by increments of when he’d go out for a smoke. It broke the endless monotony of living on a ward and, like many other long-term patients, he was determined to not become a ‘lifer’, one of those lost, institutionalised souls who simply lie in bed all day staring at the ceiling.

One might be forgiven for believing that this is more about sin and repentance than concern for the welfare of the sinners.

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Queenland

Greetings from Stonebridge a fictitious city in a fictitious state located in a tri-state area in the interior Mid-Atlantic region. We're in western Queenland, which is really a state unto itself, and not to be confused with Queensland in Australia.

Nothing written on this site should be taken as strictly true, though if the author were making it all up rest assured the main character and his life would be a lot less unremarkable.